Research Paper: “Cruelty’s rewards: The gratifications of perpetrators and spectators”

The hallmark of much of today’s porn is its cruelty. In a content analysis of 50 of today’s top selling porn films, researchers found it rife with verbal and physical aggression:

Ana Bridges: “…I’m going to begin to talk about what it is that we found after looking at these 304 scenes in these 50 top selling pornographic films. In total in the 304 scenes we coded a total of 3,376 acts of aggression. That ends up averaging…to an aggressive act every minute and a half. The scenes on average contained eleven and a half acts of verbal or physical aggression…

“So how many scenes didn’t contain aggression? About 10%…

“For verbal aggression, by far namecalling and insulting were the most common types. They were seen in almost half of scenes…

“Gagging and choking were much, much more common than any of us thought when we first walked into this project…

“Slapping happened 30% of the time… Most of the aggressors in these films were men…73%. By far the most common recipient of aggression was a woman. Even when women were aggressing, they were generally aggressing other women…

“…Less than 10% of the videos showed any kind of a positive act, and that included kissing… caressing happened maybe twice. Something like a verbal compliment, ‘Gosh, you look pretty’, not, ‘Slut bitch, come over here,’ that happened maybe five times in the 304 scenes. So we have a ratio of positive to negative behaviors of 1 to 9, which is not a sustainable, happy relationship.”

Victor Nell is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of South Africa, where he directed the clinical neuropsychology training programme, and led epidemiological studies of traumatic brain injury and interpersonal violence in Johannesburg. His research paper, “Cruelty’s rewards: The gratifications of perpetrators and spectators” (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2006, PDF), gives us an idea why pornographers would be tempted to portray cruelty. It taps into deep-seated, primitive impulses related to hunting, survival, sexual appeal, and status. Life in a cruel world may be gratifying for the few on top, but for most, it is savage and bitter. Some excerpts from Dr. Nell:

Effective violence prevention must begin with perpetrators, not victims. If the upstream approaches to violence prevention advocated by the public-health model are to be effective, psychologists must be able to provide violence prevention workers with a fine-grained understanding of perpetrator gratifications…

Predation is hard work… The stimuli driving predation and hunting are the pain-blood-death (PBD) complex: the prey’s terror and struggles to escape as it is brought down, the shedding of its blood, and its vocalisations as it is wounded and eaten, often while it is still alive. A range of anticipatory and consummatory reinforcers is triggered by the PBD complex, which is also active in intraspecific killing, and strikingly so in chimpanzees…

Cruelty requires a sufficient cognitive basis for intentionality and a sufficient social basis for its disciplinary elaboration (see sect. 5). Once these foundations have been laid, there are florid social and cultural elaborations of cruelty as punishment, for amusement, and for social control. Each of these modalities affirms the power of the perpetrator – this may be an individual acting alone or as the agent of a collective – over the victim. In hierarchical states with centralised power, cruelty becomes a vehicle for public entertainments that buttress the power of the state and heroise war. The affective loading of these elaborations is described in order to identify parallels between blood as a principal reinforcer of predators and hunters on the one hand, and, on the other, of the audiences that delight in spectacles of pain and bloodshed.

…the use of cruelty is a strongly male-gendered and contextually sensitive adaptation, which “could remain dormant for the entire life of an individual, if the relevant contexts are not encountered” (Buss 1999, p. 284), promoting inclusive fitness by augmenting the personal power, survival, and sexual access of cruel individuals. Historically, the enjoyment of cruelty has been sufficiently powerful to have led to huge social resources being channelled into cruel rites and spectacles, and this enjoyment remains a primary driver of the modern entertainment industry… Violence is a significant by-product of cruelty (see sect. 6)…

The reinforcers of cruelty feed into violence, defined by the World Health Organisation as the intentional use of physical force or power – against oneself, another individual, or a group – that causes injury, death, or psychological harm (Krug et al. 2002, p. 5): one of this target article’s purposes is to show cruelty’s relevance to the initiation and escalation of high-volume everyday violence such as drunken brawls, child beating, and sexual assault…

Entertainment is cruel if the audience is aroused by the intentional shedding of blood or infliction of pain; the infliction of pain for amusement is always cruel…

The predatory cycle is highly energised. Schaller writes that “at no other time do animals convey such a high level of mental and physical tension” (1973, p. 25)…

The emotional tone of affective attack is unpleasant (see sect. 3.4.2), but the hunt and kill are positive emotional experiences for the predator (Panksepp 1998, p. 188)…

High testosterone, high MAO-A, and low serotonin potentiate aggression; in “tournament species,” testosterone is highest in the breeding season (Panksepp 1998, p. 189)…

There is…a copious literature on opioid release under predatory threat, which entrains a sequence of defensive responses in prey that include hypoalgesia… In humans, the release of endogenous opioids in acute traumatic injuries correlates significantly with physician pain ratings and scores on an injury severity scale (Bernstein et al. 1995)…

The hunt and kill are a dangerous time for predators. The prey butts, kicks, and gores, and scavengers must be repulsed… The known links between consummatory processes and brain opioid systems may therefore be augmented during the killing–feeding cycle by further opioid release in response to injuries: an aspect of the predatory adaptation may thus be an opioid “high” that is further augmented by injury…

One may thus hypothesise that a necessary condition for the success of the predatory and hunting adaptations is the conjunction of pain – the stress of exertion and the pain of injury – with a high level of pleasurable reward intermixed with sexual arousal, and that this is also true of fighting in its various forms…

In primates and humans, intermale territorial and dominance-seeking aggression is driven by reproductive-fitness needs, with females responding positively to aggressive success so that the most vigorous males get preferential access to reproductive opportunities (Panksepp 1998). Men with absolute power may father several hundred children (Ridley 1993; Wrangham & Peterson 1996, p. 234)…

Hunting success confers direct fitness benefits: Among the Ache, “better hunters were more often named as lovers by Ache women and better hunters had more surviving children. . . . Better hunters had much higher fertility than other men” (Hawkes et al. 2001, p. 134; also Holmberg 1950)…

…confirmation of male sexual desirability through shedding the blood and taking the life of big game, which is both scarce and dangerous…

…the predator is greatly energised by the prey’s presence and its actual or attempted flight, which is a powerful trigger for pursuit and attack; by the prey’s pain (ears, lips, and genitalia are ripped off, and the prey is disembowelled while alive; hunters snare, club, and stab living animals); and by the invariable nexus between the infliction of pain and release of the prey’s blood, which is a signal for the prey’s imminent death…

For predators, pain and blood signal satiation; for humans, they are the harbingers not only of impending satiation and sexual access, but also of the animal’s death, which was bound up with the precarious survival of Pleistocene hunters, who were also the hunted (Brain 1981)…

Kings or emperors affirm their power as social regulators through carnivalesque public entertainments and punishments in which the social purpose of cruelty is manifest. The infliction of prolonged pain is an effective way to establish and maintain social dominance; the harsher or more painful the punishment, the greater the relative status advantage of the perpetrator in relation to the victim; and the more terrible the punishment, the more permanent its effects on the social system…

Deliberate infliction of pain, as with any other decisive manifestation of interpersonal power, enhances the status of the perpetrator. Accordingly, the initiation and coordination of punishment in the family-level and local group would have facilitated the emergence of a leadership figure, whose willingness to injure would have created a reputation for ferocity with significant resource access benefits for that individual… Today as in the past, aggression linked to a readiness to inflict pain is a route to prestige, leadership, and social mastery that entrains survival and reproductive benefits… Cruelty attributions may elevate status, leadership, and sexual attraction ratings more, for example, than attributions of physical strength or intelligence…

The strong routinely use pain as punishment (from the Latin poena, penalty) in their dealings with the weak – masters with slaves, adults with children, and men with women…

A hallmark of cruelty is its rapid escalation, from a slap to a punch to the smashing of bones and teeth, from teasing to murder: the closing scenes of Pasolini’s Salo illustrate the frenzy of the torturer inflamed by the terror and pain of his victims… A hypothesis worth investigating is whether the gratifications of perpetrators are dopaminergic and fuelled by opioid release. Second, though victims’ distress can inhi
bit violence (Blair 1997), their fear and pain may also escalate the perpetrator’s savagery, paralleling the predator’s escalating ferocity in the prey’s death struggle as its terror and its vocalisations mount…

Cruelty as an instrument of social control in the form of elaborate, state-sponsored entertainments (Coleman 1990; Wistrand 1992) reached its apogee in the late Roman Republic and early Empire…

As the neurobiology of predation predicts, blood and death have erotic force. Barton (1993) writes that the raging sexuality of the arena came to a focus in the gladiator’s scarred body, and Rome’s prostitutes gathered at the arena exits, where they did a brisk trade…

Given that the human appetite for cruel spectacles is unabated and that arousal by scenes of cruelty remains part of the human condition, it is remarkable that punishment and killing, once openly displayed in amphitheatres and city streets, have for the past two centuries been banished from public view and hidden behind prison walls.

What psychosocial mechanisms have operated to achieve this great shift from the permitted to the taboo? Part of the answer is given by Norbert Elias (1939/2000), who writes that the history of western civilisation is of “an advance in the frontiers of shame, in the threshold of repugnance”[5] (p. 172). No shame attached to the public torment of humans and animals in ancient or mediaeval times (sect. 5.2.4); the warrior had “extraordinary freedom in living out his feelings and passions, it allows savage joys . . . [and] hatred in destroying and tormenting anything hostile or belonging to an enemy [and] a particular pleasure . . . in the mutilation of prisoners” (Elias 1939/2000, pp. 162–63, 371).[6] But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, knights became courtiers, so that “a warrior nobility [was] replaced by a tamed nobility with more muted affects” (Elias 1939/ 2000, p. 389). Soon after, centralised state power created pacified social spaces, the restraint of aggressive instincts was internalised, and “an automatic, blindly functioning apparatus of self-control [was] established . . . [protected] by a wall of deep-rooted fears” (Elias 1939/2000, p. 368). Regrettably, these barriers are permeable and crumble as opportunity and situation allow: the challenge for violence prevention is to anchor them more deeply in the life of the instincts…

Current evidence is that under situational press, readiness to commit cruel acts is a human universal. In the 1970s, Milgram’s (1969/1974) “Eichmann experiment” and the Stanford prison experiment (Haney et al. 1973) demonstrated the “enormous power of situations” (Haney & Zimbardo 1998, p. 709) to shape and transform the behaviour of perfectly ordinary people, whose actions are facilitated by a stance of moral disengagement (Bandura 1990)…

See also:

Time to Explore the Links Between Porn, Testosterone, Sexual Behavior and Violence…[T]estosterone is highly susceptible to environment. T levels can rise and fall depending on external circumstances–short term and long term. Testosterone is usually elevated in response to confrontational situations — a street fight, a marital spat, a presidential debate–or in highly charged sexual environments, like a strip bar or a pornographic Web site…

“Dominance, Aggression, and Violence in Male-Centered Porn”[T]he more cellular memories (biological and physiological processes) that pornographers can link their porn to throughout the male brain and body, the greater chance they have of addicting their viewers. And the more naturally occurring drugs/hormones (especially testosterone, but also adrenaline, epinephrine, and others) flowing in the male mindbody during viewing, the more narrow will be his focus, the more intense his sexual/mindbody arousal, the more deeply the images will be imprinted in his memory, and the greater his addiction.

Pornographers achieve this combination of a high number of mindbody links and maximum drug/hormone release by mixing sexual images with male dominance, aggression and violent images intended to shock and stimulate simultaneously. Porn scenes ranging from simple “male in control” to aggression, rape, torture and murder, abound in Internet porn geared to the male viewer.

These kinds of images link sexual arousal in the male mindbody with emotions of shock, anger, confusion, violence and domination which cause the male mindbody to release enormous amounts of additional testosterone, which further increase male narrowing, loss of reason, feelings of aggression, and sexual drive and arousal.

What Porn Is: Selections from Mainstream Porn (explicit language)[Robert Jensen:] …Given the ease with which video can be edited, why did the producers not edit out those expressions [pain, shame, despair]? There are two possible answers. One, they may view these kinds of expressions of pain by the women as of no consequence to the viewers’ interest, and hence of no consequence to the goal of maximizing sales; women’s pain is neutral. The second possibility is that the producers have reason to believe that viewers like the expressions of pain; women’s pain helps sales…

…from my research, both through these content analysis projects and my reading of material from the industry, it seems clear that mainstream heterosexual pornography is getting more, not less, cruel…

Sex…has an emotional component, and emotions are infinitely variable. There are only so many ways people can rub bodies together, but endless are they ways different people can feel about rubbing bodies together in different times, places, and contexts. When most non-pornographic films, such as a typical Hollywood romance, deal with sex they draw on the emotions most commonly connected with sex, love and affection. But pornography doesn’t, because films that exist to provide sexual stimulation for men in this culture wouldn’t work if the sex were presented in the context of loving and affectionate relationships. Men typically consume pornography specifically to avoid love and affection.

That means pornography has a problem. When all emotion is drained from sex it becomes repetitive and uninteresting, even to men who are watching primarily to facilitate masturbation. So, pornography needs an edge. Pornography has to draw on some emotion, hence the cruelty…

The pornographers want to label any collective discussion of the meaning of intimacy and sexuality as repression. They want to derail any talk about a sexual ethic. They, of course, have a sexual ethic: Anything goes. On the surface that seems to be freedom: Consenting adults should be free to choose. I agree they should. But in a society in which power is not equally distributed, “anything goes” translates into “anything goes for men, and some women and children will suffer for it…”

National Feminist Antipornography Movement“As Jerome Tanner put it during a pornography directors’ roundtable discussion featured in Adult Video News, ‘People just want it harder, harder, and harder, because like Ron said, what are you gonna do next?’ Another director, Jules Jordan, was blunt about his task: ‘[O]ne of the things about today’s porn and the extreme market, the gonzo market, so many fans want to see so much more extreme stuff that I’m always trying to figure out ways to do something different. But it seems everybody wants to see a girl doing a d.p. [double penetration] now or a gangbang. For certain girls, that’s great, and I like to see that for certain people, but a lot of fans are becoming a lot more demanding ab
out wanting to see the more extreme stuff. It’s definitely brought porn somewhere, but I don’t know where it’s headed from there.’

[T]o the delight of the frenzied mob of young & old fans who’d just love to see her so shamed, The Shadow…blows Angie’s plan by ambushing her from behind & dragging her right to the manly man who is ready, eager & more than able to turn her over his muscular thigh & give her saucy seat six good whacks that tame the fiery female & have her singing a totally different tune when she’s finally released & forced to apologize to all.”

“Now, one of the latest things that’s been going on for a few years is ATM, Ass-To-Mouth. Now this is about a man ramming his penis into a woman’s anus and then going straight into her mouth. And the joke is she has to eat shit. Now as Bob [Jensen] once put it really well, there is no sexual arousal heightened by going from anus to mouth outside of the humiliation and debasement of that woman. What else is this about?…

“When [Boink magazine] started, women were clamoring to get into this… What is going on in this culture that so many female students from BU want to go into this?… Now this is a story on the ‘donkey punch’… This was some sex tips in the first edition of Boink, and the donkey punch is a sexual technique developed specifically by men because women have the potential to become ‘loose as a goose’ and it’s hard to do what you want to do, i.e. ejaculate. So let me tell you what this suggests. This suggests you enter her from behind, and if she’s loose as a goose then what you do is pound away, and then, at the pivotal moment, you smack her hard on the head. She’ll get a shock, pull her muscles up, and then you get to ejaculate…”

“I have no regrets or bad feelings about it,” she said. Regan Starr who worked on the second film in this “line”, Rough Sex 2, had a different take. “I got the shit kicked out of me,” she said. “I was told before the video–and they said this very proudly, mind you–that in this line most of the girls start crying because they’re hurting so bad…. I couldn’t breathe. I was being hit and choked. I was really upset, and they didn’t stop. They kept filming. You can hear me say, ‘Turn the fucking camera off’, and they kept going.”

Kara Nox, adult film star, on “What don’t you like about porn?”A: …Mostly, it’s the attitude among many men that I’m subhuman. The degradation of women is getting worse. Conditions for women on set are becoming more and more dangerous. As porn grows, more men with Neanderthalean views of women are getting power as talent, and producers. The results are increased acceptance of violence onset. Women face enough danger outside of porn. It seems as though many of the men we fear are now doing porn, and they legitimize their misogyny by saying it’s for entertainment value. That scares the shit out of me, because it means there are even more troglodytes watching this, and geting off on women being hurt.

The Science Behind Pornography AddictionPermission-Giving Beliefs are a set of beliefs that imply that my behavior is normal, acceptable, common and/or doesn’t hurt anyone so I have permission to continue to behave in the way that I am. In all types of violence and addiction, Permission-Giving Beliefs are involved. Examples would include “All men go to prostitutes”, “Women like sex mixed with violence” and “Children enjoy sex with adults”. These particular Permission-Giving Beliefs are also common in pornography…

Testimony in Minneapolis: With Growth of Porn, Rapists Show Less Remorse[L]iterally hundreds of women have mentioned to me the anger and despair they feel when their husbands, lovers, or other male partners press upon them specific sexual acts which these men learned from pornographic materials–acts of bestiality, sodomy, “swinging”, forced group sex, etc. The men feel such pressure on women is acceptable because porn is acceptable, and pornography was the so-called “educational” source…

[T]he work of Dr. Natalie Shainess (psychiatrist of New York) and Dr. Frank Osanka [sic] (psychologist and child-abuse specialist, Chicago) show that convicted rapists who, even five to seven years ago, expressed remorse about their acts of violence, recently show no such remorse and often cite as a reason for their guiltlessness that “everyone knows women want to be raped; all the porn stuff proves that.”

Behind the Scenes of Deep Throat with Linda LovelaceMarchiano traveled to campuses to speak out about her two and a half year imprisonment by her husband/manager Chuck Traynor. Linda’s speech encouraged women on the campus to protest outside the fraternity-sponsored showing of Deep Throat. She said that in this movie there are visible bruises all over her body that attest to part of her torture. The fraternity brothers’ response, was to shout out during Deep Throat: ‘Fuck her, hurt her, rip her.’ Toward the other females on the screen they screamed comments such as ‘Ugly bitch and whore.’ They chanted, ‘Bruises, Bruises, Bruises!’ continually during the film.

I turned to walk away and one of the men yelled, “There is a live one.” And I thought they meant a deer, and so I ducked and tried to run away. I realized that there wasn’t any deer in sight and that they meant me. And I started running and they ran away–they ran after me. I tripped, the forest was covered with pine needles and leaves and they caught me…

I was getting a sense of power from watching the humiliation and degradation of the women on the screen.

I was claiming power, the all-elusive power that women strive for their entire lives, from degrading and enjoying the degradation of other women. I had absorbed a lesson from the patriarchy: women are easy to degrade, weaker, and more vulnerable, so much so that even another woman can take their power. Watching women being slapped and hurt was filling that void within me that was taken so many years before by men. It allowed me to feel powerful and in control…

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